Euripides/Medea 1964

Imre Reiner made this print of Euripides’ Medea, sometime during his career, using line etching. What’s interesting about the etching process, and what Reiner really seemed to grasp, is that you can get a lot of variation, tonally, in the density of the etched lines. It looks like he really wanted to capture a psychological profile, or some kind of mood, so he uses this kind of ghostly figure, in a space that is also ghostly. There's this central figure with bold outlines and then, in contrast, this soft, tonal background, with a secondary character lurking behind. The whole thing kind of makes me think of Max Beckmann, and maybe even Edvard Munch, both artists who were exploring how images could be used to portray states of mind, internal feelings, and experiences, rather than just representing the world in a literal way. It’s that kind of ambiguity and ambivalence that really stays with me.